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NOTE: This thread was originally created in Feb 2006. At that time, Incanus and I were agreed that these lyrics were correct. I will listen again when I have time, but with the number of lyrics I've had to pull off my site this week that were wrong, another listen by other ears will not hurt anything. So, even though I had marked these resolved, I'm removing that label until they go through the CR review process.

You fool - no living manCan kill me!You will be borne awayBeyond all darkness;Your flesh devoured;Your shriveled mindLeft naked to the lidless eye.But still the soldier did not move,Child of Rohan,Slender as a steel-blade,Fair yet terrible.Too late he knew,Too late saw,This was no man...He looked upon a woman.

I'm pretty sure that I can hear the first two lines

Time stamps from a clip of just that music:[00:01]Dol[00:03]lost - [00:04]dîr [00:06]cuiol[00:08]ú-'ar [00:09]nin [00:11]de[00:12]gi!

but then the sounds of the fight get louder and the choir gets higher and the syllables less defined.

Dollost[0;00-0;03] dîr cuiol [0;03-0;07] 'ar nin degi![0;07-;0;11;] apparently ú was left out of the lyrics since I can't hear it there.Le echelithar aen, Athar fuin ban [0;11-0;19] these two lines meld into each other followed as rapidly byRhaw lîn mannen [0;19-0;23] Lanc na chen be-thobas.[0;23-0;30] this line is hard to hear but I can just barely hear Lach na chen in there.

Incanus, we are hearing the same syllables at the beginning but not with the same time stamps. This difference could be explained away with different methods of determining the times. Since we are close enough on the beginning and I have no hope on the end, I'm going to take this on faith and go with it. A couple of questions, though:

You didn't think the 'u' was sung. Is it possible that the u-ar is slid together like a diphthong or do you think it was left out?

I'm not sure what you mean by "these two lines meld into each other". Do you mean that one line is sung over the other?

And finally, just so that I can categorize it on my site... how confident are you? Fairly? Moderately? _____? From the phrasing of your post, I'm guessing at least moderately but possibly even fairly. You could even go to completely confident if that's the case... but it's such a noisy clip I can't imagine being completely confident. You could also drop down to somewhat...

I am pretty sure about the lyrics. I listened them from the much clearer soundfile from the Battle for Middle-Earth II game in the first place. The time stamps may differ since I have an edited track from the Pelennor Fields which runs over 5 minutes that incorporates that Eowyn VS Witchking choral segment and counting the time stamps from the middle of the track was challenging I meant by "melding into each other" that the two lines (Le echelithar aen, Athar fuin ban) follow each other rapidly followed by the third line (Rhaw lîn mannen). Sorry if that word "meld" caused confusion. I think that the lines Le echelithar aen, Athar fuin ban have no pause between them so that is why I chose the word.

So I am fairly confident about the lyrics. I could try to do the time stamps again:)

PS The choir sings the Le echelithar together as Leechelithar. I honestly can't hear that ú in the second line. It certainly would be audible if it formed a diftong with a.

No, there's no reason to redo the time stamps. At first I thought we were working off the same sound clip... I later realized weren't. And the differences were only 1 second off and consistent so I wasn't worried about them. (It's not so much that I want them to be exact from one person to the next, only that I want to believe we are hearing the same words at the same place and not hearing a completely different phrasing.)

And the 'how certain' question just reflects that I like to let the readers know when I may not be completely sure, but I'm sure enough to publish it. This doesn't happen a lot. I don't like to publish "good guesses", but every once in a while I will. It doesn't sound like this is the case here.

Your description of meld works well. Thanks for elaborating.

I am grateful for the certainty you guys can reach. I don't know how much my uncertainty is due to inadequate speakers/headphones... and how much is due to my inadequate hearing (I do have some hearing loss). But I trust you when you say you can or can't hear something. With the 'u', I wanted to rule out the diphthong possibility.

Nov 2007 edit: even though I was satisfied with these lyrics, I'm keeping the thread (and my mind) open for further comments.

There are four beats to the bar so the time stamps below represent what's heard in one bar.

I put this in an audio editing program and broke it into segments representing the bars. After the first two bar, there are 4 syllables to a bar, one on each beat. Here's what I think I hear. Second opinions MOST welcome.

[00:35]Dollost (beats 1 & 3)[00:38]dîr cuiol (beats 1 2 & 3)[00:41]ú-'ar nin degi! (Incanus doesn't think 'u' is sung but it could be a quick dipthong so that ú-'ar takes up one beat)